Announce: Decibel version 0.4.0

[Tobias Hunger]

I am very pleased to announce version 0.4.0 of the Decibel Realtime
Communication Framework.


Decibel
=========

Decibel is a realtime communications framework, meant to integrate services 
like CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), VoIP (Voice over IP), text based 
chat and instant messaging.

End users find in Decibel one central place to manage all realtime 
communication settings and can easily configure and change responses to 
communication requests.

By providing a simple, DBus-based API to the services like communication 
account management, connection to contacts, etc. Decibel reduces the 
complexity and effort of accessing realtime communication technologies in 
applications. This allows for integration of realtime communication 
technologies into  applications that are not focused on communication.

Decibel consists of the desktop neutral policy daemon and desktop dependent
components. These components interact with the user and his desktop 
environment by providing GUIs for common tasks like eg. creating a new 
communication account, storing passwords or contacting a friend. Using the 
Telepathy specification (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/) the Decibel 
daemon manages Telepathy compliant connection managers (implementing the 
various communication protocols) and connects them to Decibel components as 
required by the users communication needs.


Motivation
----------

Today's users are relying on communication software on their computer systems.
They are forced to switch between different applications for the different 
protocols and communication methods (text chat, telephony, etc.) they
are using. These applications usually are poorly integrated with each other,
thus requiring the users to interact with several applications to do simple
things like setting their online status to "away" on all communication 
channels they are using.


Acknowledgments
---------------

Development of Decibel is sponsored by NLnet (http://www.nlnet.com/) and
basysKom GmbH (http://www.basyskom.de/).

Thanks for the support you are giving!

I further want to thank the Tapioca project 
(http://tapioca-voip.sourceforge.net/) for providing Qt bindings
to the telepathy specification Decibel is using.


License
-------

Decibel is released under the LGPL version 2.1.


Version 0.4.0
===============

This release is considered to be a feature complete implementation of the
Decibel daemon. It does:

 * Manage communication accounts for all supported protocols
 * Listen for incoming and outgoing communication channels
 * Start up components as configured to handle these channels
 * Support profiles of component configurations. This way you can eg. have
   different reactions to incoming communication channels when online or
   offline.
 * Create connections to contacts managed in an external PIM system.
 * Propagate presence state of contacts into an external PIM system.

Please send a email to tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de if you think we 
can improve support for your use cases.

Version 0.4.0 includes an example implementation demonstrating how to 
integrate Decibel with a desktop environment. This implementation uses simple 
INI files for data storage.

This is the forth milestone release of Decibel. It is addressed to application
developers wanting to get a glance at Decibel. We are very much interested
in your feedback (and - of course - contributions;-)!


Changes since Version 0.3.0
=============================

 * Build with -fvisibility=hidden: This is the default with KDE4
 * miniGUI VoIP/CTI client added. this is an example application working well
   with the snom telepathy module available here:
       http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90
 * Documentation updated and reworked. Common API part was split out to
   avoid confusing doxygen.
 * API improvements in the ContactManager:
   Contacts are no longer required to be registered with the PIM system.


Sources:
==========

Get the sources at http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90

The code is further available in the KDE Subversion repository:
svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/work/decibel

Please see the INSTALL file for instructions on how to build the sources and
the a list of dependencies.

If you have questions or comments, please send an email to
  tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de

Thanks!

Binary packages are not available from us, but some linux distributions
already ship Decibel packages. See http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90
for a list of links.


Known Problems
================

None.


To Do
======

 * Update to the newest telepathy specification. This will improve 
compatibility
   to telepathy connection managers using the streamed media interface.
 * Finalize KDE4 Controlcenter Module for account handling, add another module
   to configure components.
 * Integrate Decibel into desktop environments: A second example 
implementation
   showing how to integrate Decibel into KDE4 needs to be added.
 * Enhance existing command line examples with a GUI and write more examples.


Contact
=========

Web:          http://decibel.kde.org/
mailing list: decibel at kde dot org
IRC:          #decibel on freenode.net
Author:       tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de
Authors Blog: http://basysblog.org/

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions, feedback or want to help
building the Decibel Realtime Communication Framework!


Thank you for your attention and best Regards,

-- 

Tobias Hunger
Senior Software Engineer

basysKom GmbH
Robert-Bosch-Str. 7 | 64293 Darmstadt | Germany
Tel: +49 6151 3968769 | Fax: -9736 |
tobias.hunger at basyskom.de | www.basyskom.de

Handelsregister: Darmstadt HRB 9352
Geschaeftsfuehrung: Eva Brucherseifer